


Half Truth

by sir_not_appearing_in_this_archive



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), SPECTRE (2015)
Genre: Angst, Canon-typical Bond/Swann, M/M, Mutual Pining, not a fix-it fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-01 13:18:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5207300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sir_not_appearing_in_this_archive/pseuds/sir_not_appearing_in_this_archive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Lying is easy. ... This lie, though. This lie might come back and bite him in the ass.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>An alternate reading of the end of SPECTRE, if Franz Oberhauser's machine had worked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half Truth

Lying is easy. Sometimes Bond thinks it’s his best skill—not shooting or hand-to-hand combat, not intel gathering or interrogation, not even fucking—he’s better at lying than all of that. (And, truth be told, in his line of work, fucking is mostly lying, making whoever he’s with feel like they’re not only the center of _his_ universe, but the center of the entire universe itself.)

God, lying is so easy. Like breathing. On occasion Bond gets it into his head that he might be pathological, and he spends a day telling every truth he can, almost to prove he’s able. These are little truths, inconsequential things, nothing confidential or classified. But they reassure him he’s not incapable of open honesty.

It’s just—deceit is so much easier. Simpler. He’s lied so well for so long he no longer even feels them prickle under his skin at night. Not even the monumental lies.

This lie, though. This lie might come back and bite him in the ass. (And not in a fun way.)

“ _Do you recognize me?_ ” Madeleine so desperate, so distraught by the pain he’s in.

Her face is a familiar shape. He knows its curves and lines, he remembers how she looks when she’s happy, when she’s angry, when she’s overcome with lust, with need, hovering on the edge of orgasm. Everything about her is familiar.

Except it isn’t _her_. Whoever is in that body, behind the mask of that tear-stained face, he doesn’t know. Bond has had dealings with identical twins before, both personally and professionally, and it’s almost like she’s the wrong twin, the one he’s never met. A stranger wearing a face that should elicit an emotional response. But all that comes is a hollow emptiness in the pit of his stomach, and on its heels deep distrust. His instincts scream that she’s an impostor.

Well, then. Looks like he can’t be trusting his instincts anymore. At least not where this sort of thing is concerned. He clamps down on the feeling and does what comes naturally to him after all these years—he lies.

Bond promised to protect Madeleine, after all. He has to protect her from this pain, too. Some things are worse than death. Telling a man you love him only to hear him say, “Sorry, do I know you?” is the sort of thing no one should have to go through.

He lies, and she believes him. It’s not even a real lie, when he thinks about it. He does know her, it’s only his mind that won’t let him acknowledge the fact.

When he contacts M, he insists the man come alone. Bond isn’t surprised when M shows up trailing Q and Moneypenny, but he has the sense to leave them outside. Bond doesn’t want to see their faces, doesn’t want to feel what he feels when he looks at M. His paranoia starts to itch at the back of his mind as they talk. It’s a constant battle to make himself believe he can trust the two people in the room. He hoped it would get easier as time passes, but Madeleine is no more familiar to him now than she was in the moments after the drill left his skull.

It’s almost a relief when he’s abducted by two men he’s never seen before. People he can relax around. And the ghost of MI6 is perfectly familiar to him, even covered in soot and ash and dust, even wired with explosives as it is. It’s the photographs that jar him. Portraits of impostors. And somewhere in these ruined halls, he knows, waits another doppelganger. One he intends to put a bullet in.

Only—when the time comes, he doesn’t want to anymore. Bond stands on the bridge with his oldest, truest enemy at his feet, helpless. _This is the man_ , he tells himself, _that caused so much pain in my life_. Yet it isn’t him. Bond can’t make himself believe this is the man who spent years tormenting him from afar. That man is dead and gone already.

Bond’s world is full of people who are dead and gone. His world is empty but for strangers wearing familiar masks. Might as well let this one live, rot in prison.

He has more pressing problems. He’s caught between two worlds, now, two possible lives he could have lived. Oberhauser may as well have killed him in the desert. He realizes the people around him aren’t shadows of themselves. He’s the shadow, a specter among the living. A ghost. How can he be 007 now? That road is closed to him forever.

He turns his back on M, on Q and Moneypenny. Madeleine waits for him on the other side of the bridge. He still has a promise to keep, though it seems every move he makes to ensure her safety only plunges her deeper into danger and despair. But he’ll try to untangle this mess, try to love a stranger, at least until she doesn’t want or need him any longer.

 

 

Bond knows he should leave, knows he should sever ties and disappear into the sunset with Madeleine. But there is the matter of the Aston Martin DB5—that one little worry almost lost amid all the others. At least the car will be familiar to him.

The problem is, as so often the case, Q. Bond can’t bear to see him, to talk to him face to face. He wants his memories of Q to be intact, whole, not of some impostor wearing Q’s skin, walking around Q’s lab.

Cycling through memories, Bond recalls images of Q—his awful fashion sense, his almost over-the-top glasses and hair. All of it a careful artifice to advertise what he is to the world, to discourage attempts of strangers to become overly familiar. He looks younger than he is and plays that to his advantage—even Bond himself underestimated Q in the beginning. In every dealing with his Quartermaster, Bond has found him exceptional, yet even more important is Q’s loyalty.

It’s that loyalty that Bond has taken advantage of. Bond knows, or at least suspects, that Q might have had a workplace crush on him for a while. Bond hasn’t lived this long by missing subtle cues. It’s not just how he gives Bond everything—shiny new toys Q knows he’ll just destroy, the best of the best. It’s not just how Q risked his career, then his life for Bond, the way he can only summon an echo of anger when Bond continually puts him and his precious prototypes in danger. It’s in the way Q looks at him when he thinks Bond won’t notice. The way Q’s smile lights up his eyes when he talks to Bond, the way Q’s touch is always fleeting, too hurried, like Bond’s skin is fire or acid. Something that will destroy Q if he lingers. That hesitation isn’t far off the mark.

Part of Bond wants to give Q what he wants, to take apart his quiet, flustering ways piece by piece, to see what’s underneath the facade of tech geek. He’s contemplated more than once pushing Q up against his lab table and kissing the technobabble right off his lips. Or perhaps he’d be a perfect gentleman all through dinner, then take Q home, stretch him naked out on his bed and see how flushed that pale skin got, see what Q looked like with no glasses, hair in disarray, barriers gone. He wants to make Q scream _James_ over and over until he doesn’t have the wherewithal to cry sensible words, until all that’s left in the world is the two of them.

He thinks about it more than he should, him and Q and the possibilities.

Bond knows Q wants him, and he knows they’d have one wonderful night together. Maybe a weekend. After that would come the complications. That’s why Bond’s never made a move, because as much as he wants to brush his fingertips along Q’s jawline and press soft kisses into the hollow of his throat, he isn’t sure he’d be able to put the pieces back together again.

What was that god-awful joke Q had made? _I said bring it back in one piece, not bring back one piece_. Bond wouldn’t treat Q the same way he treats Q’s gadgets. Q is priceless, irreplaceable.

Q’s off-limits.

Bond rides the lift down to Q’s lab, butterflies in his stomach. He can’t help but hope that Q will be different, that he’ll see his face and the universe will right itself. Bond supposes he’s gotten too good at lying, if he’s convincing himself now. The lift doors open and Q’s double sits at Q’s desk, touching his things, violating his sanctuary. For a millisecond Bond has the terrifying desire to remove this impostor from the face of the Earth.

This is why he’s leaving. He cares for Madeleine a great deal—she’s strong and kind, with a ruthlessness in her that appeals to Bond. Together they could tear the world apart, if they want. But they can just as easily live quietly somewhere. They can be happy together.

But him and Q—that would start a fire that would consume them both. The world needs Q more than Bond needs him, and it needs Q whole and unharmed. End of story.

Bond will get what he’s come for, then never see Q again.

The way Q’s eyes light up makes Bond want to come clean—about what Oberhauser did to him, not about the particulars of what Bond wants to do to Q, even this false one. The limits of Q’s abilities always seem nonexistent to Bond. Surely he can find a way to fix what was done to Bond's mind—

That way madness lies. He’s made his decision.

Bond gets the car and leaves.

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't get this out of my head the entire time I watched the end of SPECTRE, and because I made myself sad, I thought I might as well make as many other people sad as possible, too.


End file.
